I will be live-blogging the House Energy and Commerce committee hearings on climate science with Eli Kintisch. The details are available here, and there should be a live feed from the committee website from 10am.
Eli and I did this last year for the last Democrat-run hearings, and it went quite well – a little like a play-by-play from Eli and some background analysis/cites from me. People can ask questions and comment in real time and depending on how busy it gets, they might get a response.
As usual, this hearing will likely be long on political grandstanding and short on informed discussion, but there might be some gems. Of the witnesses, John Christy and Roger Pielke Sr. are the main witnesses for the majority side, while Richard Somerville, Francis Zwiers and Chris Field are the Dem invitees. There is newcomer to the roster (at least to me), in Knute Nadelhoffer, who presumably will discuss climate change impacts on biological systems (but I don’t really know). There is one out-of-left-field witness, Donald Roberts, who is a serially wrong DDT advocate who is probably there in order to dismiss environmental regulation in general, following the well-worn strategy described in Oreskes and Conway’s “Merchants of Doubt” (Chapter 7 on the revisionist attacks on Rachel Carson) (NB. DDT-related arguments are off topic for this blog, but for background of the specifics of the DDT ‘meme’ see this summary, and interested commenters are encouraged to go to Deltoid).
Anyway, for those who are aficionados of science as contact sport (TM, Steve Schneider), it might be fun.
Update: This was also live-blogged at ClimateCentral and twittered by UCS.
> an already intransigent industry that is going to continue
Perhaps not.
Washington’s only coal-fired power plant will … phase out coal-burning entirely by 2025
Shut Oregon’s only coal-fired power plant no later than Dec. 31, 2020
Colorado: convert the Cherokee 4 coal-fired power plant unit to natural gas.
http://coloradoindependent.com/tag/coal-fired-power-plants
No coal-burning power plants in the Denver area after 2017.
(Google will find the stories; cites cut to satisfy the spam filter)
re: Gavin’s response to #42 Thank you very much for clearing that up. It’s even worse than I thought.
Hank Roberts says … pay no attention to that carbon behind that methane screen. Typical.
Hank @51,
The Virginia senator is going to set up his people for a whole lot of hurting. The writing is on the wall– coal is dirty and people do not like it, and that is neglecting carbon.
Going by your numbers they have 5-10 years to adapt. Adjusting is tough, but it beats being unemployed. If they were prudent, conservative and smart, they would have already started the transition. But what are they doing? Playing martyrs and burying their heads ever deeper into the ground. That is denial and ideology at work.
Sorry, I have no idea what either TLE or ML is arguing with.
I don’t recognize the notions they’ve attributed to me above.
Hank @55,
I am agreeing with you, not arguing with you. @51 you gave a list of coal-fired plants that will be shut down relatively soon. That does not bode well for states which rely on selling coal. That is where I was coming from.
Did you watch the feed today? Pretty scary stuff.
No time, but read a few lines of Christy’s testimony…like “we can’t attribute the flood in Podunk last week to AGW” or the earthquate in Haiti, either, for that matter. Ergo, there’s no such thing as global warming.
Europe:
“… pellets and other wood-based fuels …. Government mandates are essential to the increasing use of pellets in power generation …. “You are looking at a totally artificial market,” …. “No power plant would consider using pellets for one minute if they didn’t have to do it.”
…. California, which has a goal of producing 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, is looking at using wood products in coal plants….”
http://www.teamcamden.com/index.php/partnership-home/119-energy/105-wood-pellets-made-in-camden-as-renewable-energy-source-
oh … dear ….
http://www.virginiaminingassoc.com/
Hello, is there something going on in scienceblogs.com, or is it just the distance (and connection)? I keep getting redirected to a blank. Should that be avoided?
Caught the tail end of the hearing and scrolled through the comments. Verdict? More Gavin – less Roger would have been ideal. Being able to refute arguments and provide links in real time was a real bonus. As someone might have pointed out above, it would have been great if a staffer had kept up with the live blog and fed questions to some of the Congressmen. Any of you folks have connections? Wonder if some contact could be made to one of the AAAS fellows – they’re an eager bunch.
And Henry Waxman has always been a friend of science. But the Chair entering the “dissent” document was a foul end to the day.
#32
I understand Mister Hansen has made many predictions – most of them have not come true.
[Response: You understand incorrectly. – gavin]
Thomas Lee Elifritz @45
The scientific community’s job is *NOT* to grasp the implications of the coming social meltdown.
Their job is to do the science and present the facts. It is the job of our policy makers to make decisions based on those facts and therefore prevent the coming social meltdown. Granted individual scientists may decide to be politically active if they should so choose.
To be clear I certainly agree that our so called leaders are at best ignorant and at worst deliberately derlilect in their duties.
Personally, as much as I think that climate change taken by itself, is a major crisis for our civilization, it pales in comparison to resource depletion and the head on collision with continuing population growth. Granted climate change cannot be seperated from everything else that is happening in the world right now. There are way too many feedback loops at work with multiple major train wrecks occuring simultaneously.
May I recommend spending some time with Dr. Joseph Tainter, who carefully crosses the ‘T’s and dots the ‘I’s of the coming collapse of our complex civilization. Here’s a short preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzuviYRse3E
Cheers!
62 Steve bsaid: “I understand Mister Hansen has made many predictions – most of them have not come true.”
I’ll see Gavin and raise. Below is a google scholar search on Hansen’s publications. Start with the first and tell us where it is wrong. Then go to the second tell us where it is wrong. Then the 3rd. Then the 4th. I’ll be looking forward to your responses.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=atmospheres%2C+OR+climate%2C+OR+light+OR+planet+%22JE+Hansen%22&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C32&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
your question Gavin, “Is it possible to have susbtantive discussion in public on these issues?” is right at the nut of it … David Suzuki received an award in February of this year and at the event he is reported to have said (words to the effect) that “We have been at this for 50 years now and the situation is getting worse.”
So … where do we go from here?
“I thought the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences was mandated by Congress to provide expert opinion on such issues?” – whatever
Republicans haven’t been listening to the NRC since Reagan, when they started their attack on science and reason in earnest.
Republican presidents dropped the position of science advisor from presidential cabinets. Obama has returned to reason by returning to the tradition of having one.
Roger Pielke Sr. was there to rehash his dislike of the IPCC and anything associated with them, as well as push his idea that the heat island effect is the holy grail of climate science.
If Pielke actually thinks that the “heat island effect” is a real issue, then he’s definitely out of touch. Demonstrating that UHI is not a significant factor in the global temperature
signal is something that on-the-ball lower-division undergraduate students would have no trouble doing.
MapleLeaf wrote: “The GOP representatives seemed wholly ignorant of the science, and eager to latch onto any notion that supports their ideology, regardless of how inaccurate, incorrect or mythical it is. This is clearly an ideological issue for them, regardless of what they might claim.”
It’s not an “ideological” issue. It’s a money issue.
They are tools of the fossil fuel corporations and they will do whatever it takes to perpetuate for as long as possible the fossil fuel corporations’ one billion dollars per day in profits from business-as-usual consumption of their products, and to delay and obstruct for as long as possible any measures to reduce fossil fuel use, whether through efficiency, renewable energy, mass transit, etc.
Their fake, phony, trumped up, Koch-funded, Madison Avenue-scripted, focus-group-tested, talk radio-programmed pseudo-ideology is as bogus as their pseudoscience.
The point of this stuff is to get statements into the record that the committee members can then point to as given — and base decisions on.
The statements themselves — like the UHI stuff — don’t have to have a basis in fact. They’re in the record. That’s all that’s needed.
You saw the same tactic in the realtime blogging, with wossname the ‘advocacy science’ guy posting assertions that climate doesn’t affect crop yield, with nothing but cherrypicking.
The problem here is that the science side uses the time to give a view of the science, while the political side uses the time to accumulate a pile of cherries, and in the committee work that follows, what matters is who has more cherries.
The scientific community’s job is *NOT* to grasp the implications of the coming social meltdown.
And, of course, your job is to tell the scientific community what their job is, and expect us to accept your opinion, no matter what our opinion may be?
I am blanket criticizing individuals within a community, take it or leave it. Those who choose not to speak up about this are known by their silence.
By this, of course I mean … oh … ahem … that.
Susan Anderson:
Respect for education … not only are the newly elected tea party types anti-science, their anti-intellectualism extends to an all-out attack on teachers and the educational system.
An educated electorate works against them, and they know it.
dhogaza,
Actually, part of the problem is that I think a fair number of teachers fall into the tea party realm. Case in point is a commenter at SS who said he was a teacher, was adamantly skeptical, and claimed that in his science department of ten there was only one “lukewarmer.”
That’s bad news… when those who should understand science at least to some small degree don’t, but think they do, and teach what they don’t properly understand.
Climate science has moved well beyond ever being able to explain it to people, I think. It’s too complex, and the efforts to derail it really are too easy to carry out. If there were a political motivation, I think any powerful lobby could convince people that relativity, or even the efficacy of modern drugs, are all a myth. Look at DDT, ozone/CFC’s, and autism and vaccines.
The gap between those that don’t understand and those that can is just too great. I really believe a lot of the problem we face today is due to a simple lack of respect for scientists as authorities. It’s not that people need to understand the science, it’s that they need to respect and trust the people who do (and to recognize when someone else, i.e. the FF industry) is using stooges to undermine the perspective of real science.
48, Mapleleaf,
I think it’s time for someone with the right name (no idea who) to write a book. It’s time to compile and report on the individuals behind denial. Someone needs to take the transcript of this hearing, and any others, as well as all of the myriad published articles and misstatements, and go to town embarrassing and lambasting the people involved. Call a spade a spade. Point out idiocy, inconsistency, and self-serving distortions of the truth.
Make people’s reputations suffer for the games they are playing, and get on record so that the constituents know, a year or three from now, that the officials that they elected sold them out, by either purposely ignoring the facts, or by not doing their jobs properly and not merely wallowing in but trumpeting their own ignorance as if it were a virtue.
A) Embarrass the people who should be embarrassed
B) Get it on record, now, so that as the irrefutable facts of climate change continue to accumulate, people will at least be able to look back and say “holy cow, why did I let them get away with this?”
This GOP crew is going to destroy a whole lot of things before people get as angry as they need to be.
Bob @ 72:
The problem with “science” is that often there is more to the “science” than meets the eye.
For example, the subject of DDT (which you mentioned — just saying) is more complex (as any reading of the history of its ban would reveal) than “it’s bad”. Yeah, it was “bad” in some ways, and ineffective and abused and so on.
It’s the complexity of the subject that tends to create both cynicism (I’m a professional cynic and quite expert on the subject of cynicism …) and scientifically invalid mythologies. We had our “warm” winters, and now we’re having milder and more meteorologically violent ones. Same cause, different experience. Try fitting that into a sound bite.
For politicians (since this is about politics …), they are accustomed to having the Crisis du Jour and it’s supporters coming to them, Hat In Hand, looking for money from the public larder. We don’t have a Congress filled with physicists (and economists and social scientists and …), we have a Congress mostly filled with lawyers and career politicians. Compared to the Framers, our current bunch in Washington knows little or nothing of the Natural Sciences. Sure, Ron Paul is a medical doctor, but he seems to be the exception. Anyone have a list of degrees by percentage representation? My guess is “graduate studies in science and economics” is grossly underrepresented compared to the most pressing problems of the day.
44, gavin, inline comment: To assume as you appear to be doing that all costs associated with a carbon price however implemented will be spread evenly across the population is naive. It won’t be, and there will be some groups who will be proportionately disadvantaged (and others who are unaffected). Why is this even contentious? – gavin
The value of a carbon tax depends on its being paid for by the carbon users, both to internalize the otherwise external costs of the (byproducts of) the carbon-based fuels (that is, to make the beneficiaries pay all the costs associated with their benefit, an equity argument) and to spur the development of alternatives that have fewer total costs. Therefore, the costs should not be borne equally across society, but by the purchasers. If the costs be born equally, then that simply continues the current practice of making people who don’t benefit from coal (for example) pay (some of) the costs of coal.
Consider the comparison of California (which I criticize sometime) and W. Virginia. California is little dependent on electricity from coal, and is engaged in a very costly program to reduce its dependence further, and to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels generally. Why should Californians pay additionally to help the W. Virginians gradually wean themselves from a coal economy as other states reduce their dependence on electricity from coal? Politically, something may have to be paid to W. VA to get the W. VA representatives on board, but I see no argument from either equity or economic efficiency why Californians should pay the costs of W. VA’s transition, after having borne their own transition costs without the help of W. VA.
That is where the contentiousness comes from, the arguments by diverse factions in the polity about how much they have to pay, and for what, and to whom, and the justice of it all. California has already paid, a lot and unwisely in my opinion, but I see no argument based on either justice (social equity) or economic efficiency why they should pay more.
Gavin, #34:
This comment has a breezily cynical undertone. Rather than address the future realistically, we’re in the business of tossing bones – even when the problems to be “sorted out” are as apparently intractable as in the case of CCS.
#64
I understand Mr Hansen predicted “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.”
Is it under water?
Well Gavin – do you still believe I “understand incorrectly” or can you defend Mr Hansens “predictions”
[Response: Perhaps you’d care to look up when that was predicted for, and under what circumstances? (Here’s a clue). – gavin]
Yes, it’s a knotty problem. I’d be happy if people just learned geography, history, and reality checking (critical thinking). That would knock out some of the cobwebs and magical thinking that makes people ignore reality in favor of their illusions. I’d love it if people realized it was their own shortfall that they find science difficult, but at the moment that is a dream largely beyond hope. And there are weird artifacts like that engineers know lots of science but seem shortsightedly focused on the extent rather than the limitations of their knowledge.
My impression of climate change is that it is here and obvious. What is startling is that as the evidence piles up, the illusionists are getting better at persuading people it isn’t real.
It’s probably true that teaching is being infiltrated, but on the whole I don’t think it’s the hardworking underpaid public servants who are to blame, but the communities who don’t want real instruction for fear it will “corrupt” their children.
The endemic disrespect for learning in our culture is a real problem.
[ot: I kind of like evoljucija sedifir – all kinds of weird word play in there]
BTW, it is not the job of your host to bring you to a sense of reality about stuff you’ve already decided. It is nice of him to let you air your prejudice, but a proper study of what Hansen and Mann actually said and did would be of great value. Repeating carefully picked misrepresentations is neither helpful nor courteous, in addition to being wrong. The burden of proof is not on the hardworking guy who tries to bring some sense and civility to this conversation.
Bob @73,
“This GOP crew is going to destroy a whole lot of things before people get as angry as they need to be.”
I fear that you are probably right. Heck, they gave Bush two terms (and the second one with a majority IIRC) before they finally got the message.
TO deviate, I just remembered something that I meant to say earlier.
I was struck how one GOP senator kept asking questions along the lines of “Is it your opinion…”.
The scientists missed the opportunity to say “While you, sir, may elect to be interested in opinion and rhetoric, I am concerned about facts and evidence….”.
I was also struck by the irony of the politicians who (falsely)accuse climate scientists getting involved in policy trying to solicit their opinion on policy. Nice try, but only Christy took the bait. Whatever little respect I might have had for him as a fellow scientist vaporized yesterday.
“Next time they do this, the scientists need to be afforded the time to address each and every one of the myths perpetuated by the contrarian scientists and/or the politicians. Their ignorance needs to be exposed for all Americans to see.” – 48
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the American people elected those GOP science illiterates to office.
You can only expose scientific illiteracy to someone who is scientifically literate.
15 years ago, I held an optimistic vision that American Conservatives could be educated. Meaning that I thought that they could be trusted to respond to logical argument and reason.
At that time I was participating in some on line forums in which simple facts, of history, of science, and of basic common sense, were presented, along with some logical arguments leading to some inescapable conclusions.
When presented with the inescapable conclusion that these Conservatives were wrong invariably the responded that they weren’t wrong, but that they history must be wrong, or scientific fact must be wrong, or the news-media must be involved in a conspiracy to lie, or that the rules of logic didn’t apply to a particular set of facts.
Several people expressed their opinions in the following manner – to paraphrase the collection – “You think your facts and arguments are right, but no matter what you say, no matter how truthful your argument, we will never believe you. Your conclusions can not be part of our reality.”
Now the topic at hand were typically the observation of CFC catalyzed ozone depletion, but they also included evolution, abortion, education, and other hot button Conservative items, not least of which was the abysmal political record of George Bush Jr.
Ultimately the reactions from the Conservatives was always the same. A complete denial of the facts, and a complete denial of reality.
Scientists who expect to reason with these people are working under the false assumption that they are amenable to reason, that they will accept rational arguments, and accept facts as facts.
This is not the case.
This is also why Science has lost ground. Why, to a large extent, Americans believe Evolution even less today than 40 years ago.
Now science will eventually win. But the scientists here should ask themselves if they wish to continue to lose on all fronts for the rest of their lives, or take the political steps necessary to bring all of these issues to a head, and defeat the enemy.
I am not an evolutionary biologist. Neither am I a Climatologist. I am not even American, so I can not fight these battles for you.
You have to have the Guts and Brains to do it yourselves.
You have to have the Guts and Brains to break some heads.
Being Mr. Nice Guy has got you nothing but defeat.
I have to admit that I don’t understand much of what is said here but I come back often because I really do appreciate all that you do. Thanks. Oh, what prompted me to write anything was the chuckle I got out of, “Anyway, for those who are aficionados of science as contact sport (TM, Steve Schneider), it might be fun.”
Thanks again.
Thomas Lee Elifritz @70,
Huh?
Did you even bother to read what I wrote or are you just trolling?